Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/22819
effectively as a spot they had to shoot — with a schedule that is only 10 to 30 percent longer.That is huge.” Raimondi worked with Asylum for the spot’s visual effects. (Sadly, owner Nathan McGuinness closed the studio just two months ago, unable to financially keep the doors open.) The agency was Leo Burnett Detroit and creative director Peter McHugh. Another trend Raimondi sees relates to budgets and schedules.“Not only are bud- gets getting squeezed but schedules are getting squeezed as well.They expect you to go faster because of the tools available these days, so they expect to be able to compress schedules.To me that’s a danger- ous trend. Budget is a terrible place to skimp, but schedule is even worse. Speed is great, but it doesn’t allow time for the ‘step back,’ which is most important in creating any piece of art” The speed of today’s tools is having an impact on more than just schedules, he says. “The thing that’s going to make a dif- ference in the overall picture of visual ef- fects — what’s going to make them better — is computer speed,” reports Raimondi. “Imagine an artist dabbing a brush in paint, touching the canvas and then having to walk away for 20 minutes to see what the paint had done. Imagine how slow your workflow would be.That’s what the work- flow used to be like.With faster computers now — in most cases — you see your progress in realtime , so you can do better work faster.” Thanks to these faster systems and new software, says Raimondi, natural phenom- ena, such as fire, smoke and water, are pop- ping up more frequently in commercials. “Things like fluid dynamics, which used to make people shake in their boots, is not that big of a deal anymore. Now there are places that specialize in this type of work, like Scanline VFX.” Studios specializing in specific visual ef- fects, like Scanline, is something that Rai- mondi is seeing more of.“Some places are really good at everything, but in today’s day and age, unless you are a behemoth like Digital Domain or ILM, it’s hard to have a staff that has all these different disciplines in it.” QuietMan sees growth in cross-platform work N EW YORK— According to Johnnie Semerad, founder/cre- ative director of commercials VFX house QuietMan, one current trend is toward cross platform.“Everything we do now needs to have a 360 approach.We did a Stayfree job recently where our responsibilities included the TV,Web content and print.The art buyer asked,‘Why does the print art cost half of what we normally pay?’ The answer was simple,‘The TV and Web portion of the job paid for part of it.’” But Semerad says it’s not always a financial choice.“We worked on a huge Gillette launch, which included print,a how-to segment, Web content, sales videos and a TV commercial.The client wanted a continuous feel to everything — a nice dark blue color palette.The director of the TV commercial wanted a bright, shiny white background. Gillette was like,‘Too bad, you’re less than five percent of the whole project, the background is dark blue.” The studio also worked on a Febreze project, where they shot two commercials and created banner ads and Web content.“For Pristiq we handled the effects for two commercials, did the Web content, print and banner ads,” explains Semerad.“The list goes on and on.To do this we’ve had to expand our repertoire to in- clude not just animators and designers but programmers and content creators. In the past, the :30 commercial ran the show, but now it can comes from anywhere. Perfect example is the project we’re working on now, where the print came first, which propelled the rest.” COLOSSAL LaCie 12big Rack Network For over 20 years, LaCie’s professional storage solutions have been heralded as the most powerful and innovative choices on the market. Our 12big Rack Network offers up to 96TB of network-attached storage, and has all the performance, reliability, and extra features that you need. With an Intel® Xeon® processor, Windows® Storage Server 2008 Standard Edition pre-installed, and built-in hardware redundancy, it’s the ultimate corporate file-sharing device. Ready for your new solution? Visit lacie.com to learn more. Store. Access. Manage. ©2010 LaCie. All rights reserved. 1TB= 1000GB. 1GB = 1000MB. 1MB = 1,000,000 Bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending upon operating environment (typically 10% less).